


Bloodline

by tolakasa



Category: Firefly, Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-12-21
Updated: 2007-12-21
Packaged: 2017-11-14 22:56:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/520376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tolakasa/pseuds/tolakasa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-movie. Zoe finds something unexpected in Wash's things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bloodline

The revolver was an antique--no, older than that; it was _ancient_ , older than the Lassiter they'd ripped off awhile back. Possibly it dated back to Earth-that-was. The engraving on the barrel bore that out; not Mandarin and not English. One of the lost languages, maybe.

_Non timebo mala._

Inara didn't know what it meant, and she hadn't been able to find it on the cortex. Doc hadn't known either, though he said it looked like Latin. Doctors knew some Latin, but not much, and he said the medical terms weren't the same as an actual language. Shepherd might have known, but there was no way to ask him now.

Mal and Jayne had just shrugged, and each of them had suggested it might have some value as a relic.

Zoe traced her fingers along the grain of the wooden grip. There was another engraved symbol there, a five-pointed star closed in a circle. Nobody knew what it meant either, though River had called it a pentagram before going off on a ramble about ghosts and magic. Girl was better than she had been, didn't have fits and all, but she still didn't make sense half the time.

It was ancient, and beautiful, and powerful, and Zoe just didn't understand why it had been hidden in Wash's things, wrapped in a scrap of old, embroidered silk that looked like it had been torn from a Companion's dress, without so much as a note explaining it. It hadn't just been stashed there, either, it was still working, still oiled and carefully cleaned, and there were seven numbered bullets in another twist of silk in the package.

Zoe let the bullets trickle into her hand, and her skin tingled at the touch of the metal. There was something weird about them, something she could only describe as power, the kind of power she'd seen when River read someone or went off in one of her fighting fits. Inhuman power.

She wasn't like Mal, betrayed by his God and angry because of it. Zoe just got more use out of what she saw and touched. She'd been a soldier all her life, and soldiers didn't have time to stare at the stars and ponder philosophy.

But this....

Maybe not divine. But definitely magic.

She slid the revolver into a spare holster; it didn't fit well, but it would do. The bullets she replaced in their silk nest, tucked back among the handful of Wash's things she was keeping. Her gaze fell on a photo from his childhood, one he tended to use as a bookmark: his mother, who had died young. Zoe's long-dead mother-in-law stared back, a dead warrior, pentagrams tattooed on the backs of her hands, and a gold amulet on a cord around her neck--a familiar picture, one she'd seen a thousand times and never paid much attention to. Now, though, now she recognized the gun in the woman's hands.

Zoe picked up the picture and turned it over. _Samantha Winchester Washburne,_ it said, in a spidery handwriting. _Hunter._


End file.
